Apple and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As Oscar Wilde might have put it: To lose one tech news cycle may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.

That's the state of affairs for Apple on Wednesday, when rival companies and the twitterati pounced on two embarrassing pieces of PR for the company. First, bendgate — a fast-spreading meme based on evidence that it is possible to bend an iPhone 6 Plus with your bare hands, and that it may not be the best idea to combine the oversized phone with tight jeans.

There are all sorts of mitigating factors here, but the fact remains that the optics of this story are an absolute disaster for Apple — especially considering the similarly-sized Samsung Galaxy Note 3 retained its shape during a similar test. If you're about to take a plunge into the phablet world and you're looking at both of these devices, which would you choose based on a cursory glance at the news?

Even the BlackBerry CEO got in on the act, smugly pointing out that his company's new Passport smartphone won't bend. When BlackBerry is poking fun at you, something has gone horribly wrong.

Hot on the heels of bendgate came what some have called brickgate — or the news that the iOS 8.0.1 update turned some phones, particularly the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, into bricks with no phone service.

The update has since been pulled, and you can take steps to restore your phone. But it's another blow to Apple users like me, whose proudest boast is that products here inside the walled garden "just work."

Apple has set a high bar for itself, and we have similarly set a high bar for Apple. On Wednesday, the company not only failed to clear that hurdle — it didn't even look like it was jumping.

Song-a-day guy Jonathan Mann had some words of sympathy for Apple engineers in the little ditty below, and his point is well taken. We feel your pain, Apple engineers. We know you'd probably like to apologize to users somehow — but this is Apple we're talking about, where the admission of any kind of mistake in public is verboten.

For years, the company has largely followed a deliberate PR strategy of nonresponsiveness. Faced with a crisis, Apple goes into lockdown mode. Because this strategy has not affected the esteem we hold Apple products in, or the record sales they consistently report, the company's PR team appears to have taken the lesson that it works. (As have an increasing number of other PR teams at large Silicon Valley companies, unfortunately.) And so they go on pretending everything at Apple is perfect, and shut down every line of inquiry that suggests otherwise.

But it's not too hard to see that everything behind the scenes at Apple is not well. According to this email exchange, apparently with an employee, 1 Infinite Loop is undergoing a mass freakout:

Is that really the best strategy? When it comes to Bendgate, probably. That's clearly a no-win situation, especially for a company with Apple's level of visibility. You can't deny it happens, because it's right there on video. You can't say that it has only happened to a handful of users; that would be practically begging for hundreds of other users to come forward with their phones bent out of shape and their noses bent out of joint. You're feeding a story that would go away faster if left alone.

But Brickgate? That's a case where it wouldn't just be helpful to get the word out to users that you shouldn't download the update — it's downright irresponsible not to. Yes, the company would face a wave of extra stories from the tech press ("Apple Responds to iOS 8.0.1 Debacle"; "Apple Admits Fault in Latest iOS Update.") But it would also enhance the trust and respect of its users.

Simply pulling the update a few hours later, and not saying word one about the whole thing for the rest of the day, looks phenomenally shady. (Apple finally spoke up with an apology early Thursday.)

Now if Cook could only apologize faster for turning the phones of trusting users into bricks — apologize not necessarily at the speed of social media, but within at least the same news cycle — it would go a long way to fixing one of the worst days in Apple's history.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.